Parasite Art as a Subversive Form of Resistance That Offers Direct Tactics in Times of Missing Emancipatory Alternatives

This article explores parasitic tactics as a subversive mode of artistic resistance that operates within, against, and through dominant systems. Drawing from the project Penthaus à la Parasit and other artistic interventions performed by the author, it investigates camouflage, amoral action and ephemerality among others as core tactics of parasitic art. These practices do not confront power frontally, but infiltrate its architectures - mirroring, mimicking, and subtly hijacking them from within. Rather than offering utopian blueprints or moral clarity, parasitic art insists on ambiguity, strategic survival, and tactical withdrawal. It mobilizes fiction, spatial intervention, and performative infiltration to access new publics and unsettle hegemonic orders. Positioned between critique and complicity, visibility and invisibility, this practice develops a dissident agency grounded in fragility. This article argues for the parasite as a conceptual figure and tactical toolset for artistic practices that aim not to represent resistance, but to enact it from within. Methodologically, the essay follows an immanent, practice-based approach rooted in artistic enactment, in which knowledge emerges through the parasitic art itself - through doing, infiltrating, and reflecting, in the sense of Hübner’s practice-derived method and Badura’s notion of Mitvollzug.